DEl speedwagon EM @uhs...•51m X I loathe Spanberger as much as she loathes people like me but I do appreciate that she appears to be governing Virginia like Benjamin Butler governed the military dictatorship of Union-occupied New Orleans The Political HQ • @ThePolitica... • 1h € BREAKING F The Virginia Redistricting Amendment has passed. This changes Virginia's congressional maps from a 6-5 Democratic split to a 10- 1 Democratic split, representing a four-seat gain for Democrats.

the cool thing about being a progressive normielib is that I can just say “this is awesome” instead of doing a bunch of throat clearing about loathing Spanberger before I praise her for obliterating 4 Republican seats

I would submit that a gerrymander by politicians saying fuck the voters and one by voters saying fuck the politicians are two wholly different animals

lmao. That's the best. I tried to post this exact screenshot earlier today but the in-flight internet wasn't good enough to upload the image. Sad.

The good news is that Trump has not yet even begun to crime and fuck people over.
He’s got years more suffering and distress to deliver. He’s not going to let up on the gas and coast out, he’s going mentally spiral all the way and maybe find approval levels in the noise floor.

The good news is that Trump has not yet even begun to crime and fuck people over. He’s got years more suffering and distress to deliver. He’s not going to let up on the gas and coast out, he’s going mentally spiral all the way and maybe find approval levels in the noise floor.

It’s not the best Civ, but it is novel so you won’t feel like you are just playing reskinned Civ6. It takes a bit to get used to changing civilizations at the end of each age, but I think it was a smart way to deal with the problem of getting irredeemably ahead or behind.

Yes. It’s a different kind of escape and escape is good (so long as you come back). There are days where my anxiety about things in my life is through the roof and it’s a great way to leave this world for a little while and let your mind off the hook.

The meta story of the (imminent) Yes win in VA is the total inability of Trump to ever look down the game tree. He was apparently unable to comprehend that Democrats would respond to his push to redistrict in GOP-run states

This same pehenenon is also why we are losing a war to Iran.

He actually said, on live TV, that Iran retaliating in the gulf was not fair! I’ll have to dig up the clip, I’m sure it’s in Rupar’s feed, but it’s such an astonishing window into what passes for that man’s mind.

it's also remarkable that *no one else in the gop was willing to explain this to him.*

Greg Abbott was in a solid position to tell Trump, "this is probably going to backfire; maybe reconsider."

Abbott has his own power base, and still looks like a solid lock for governor. but nope, wouldn't do it

No we should definitely tilt the playing field against the fascist party. There's a pretty strong case that we should de facto ban the Republican Party.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is a very good essay and reading it really throws into sharp relief the virtues of an essay over a tweet.

The Ethics of Not Being Offended Discomfort isn't harm. Treating it as harm burns the finite moral attention we need for the suffering that actually exists.

I've been thinking about why I've never felt the specific kind of offense that powers plenty of moral panics—the sense that a distant creative act has desecrated something sacred. And why the people who do feel it are making a category error with real ethical stakes.

All right then, fucker, you are my enemy. Maybe you are stronger and will win, I don’t know, but I’m going to do my best to claw your eyes out now.

When they've chosen friend-enemy politics, those are the politics we have now. We don't get to opt out. We just have to win, beat them until they stop moving, and then we can have a normal democratic conversation again.

I thought you were supposed to be the tolerant ones.

You thought wrong. Burn jn Hell, enemy of enlightened humanity. .

Getting sloshed right now is awkward timing for me because my college aged daughter drank too much recently with some negative consequences (not too bad) and I am trying to be a good example. She’s not here to see, but I still feel a tad guilty. But only a tad because I’m sloshed.

The drinks at the Cowboy Club bar in the Dallas Love Field airport are quite strong. I’m so toasted right now.

There should be a feature where you can supply your own avatar for someone you follow. I keep seeing dozens of posts by some rando unaware that it’s a favorite follow from the old days because, apparently, learning a new avatar is impossible for me.

Yeah, one of the key lessons I’ve taken away from the last decade is that structural neutrality isn’t enough. That you have to defend liberal democracy, liberalism, with passion and prejudice and the determination to utterly destroy its enemies. No quarter in the fight to preserve liberalism.

Yeah, one of the key lessons I’ve taken away from the last decade is that structural neutrality isn’t enough. That you have to defend liberal democracy, liberalism, with passion and prejudice and the determination to utterly destroy its enemies. No quarter in the fight to preserve liberalism.

Before Trump I didn’t cuss at all. Not ever. Not even “shit” or “damn”.

Now…

I’m still not exactly in favor of cussing, but somehow it feels like a useful part of a defensive shield against the real obscenities all around us.

I really did know people by their avatars.

Also, thanks for this thread making me paranoid. 🙃

Unrelated, I thought you had died or something because I haven’t seen you in so long. I didn’t recognize your current avatar or display name (I rarely pay enough attention to see the actual handle, not sure why I noticed today). This has happened a lot to me a lot among the Twitter diaspora.

Southern Poverty Law Center indicted on federal fraud charges related to past use of paid informants The Southern Poverty Law Center has been indicted on federal fraud charges related to its past use of paid informants to infiltrate extremist groups.

The apparent theory here--SPLC was defrauding donors by paying right-wing extremist org informants, and also took completely legal steps for obscuring the money trail for very obvious reasons on this totally legal thing to do--is ludicrous even by the notoriously malleable standard for wire fraud.

the far-right extremists at DOJ are bent that SPLC exposed far-right extremists

Well, the MAGA folks have set me off and I’m going to be set off till I die. I’ll never again be a squish about bailing out farmers or truckers or any other MAGA demographic. They have permanently lost my sympathy.

One of my favorite online discourse black holes is when someone thinks a community garden in a vacant city lot is going to materially feed the homeless. People don’t seem to believe that math is a thing and you can calculate that shit.